Law Firm Websites with High Conversion Rates

Law Firm SEO Frequently Asked Questions

How do you ‘beat’ and ‘outrank’ law firm websites in the top spots of Google?

You want your law firm SEO to rank you organically in the top three for your best keywords. That’s where the best leads are. Right now, your competitors are probably taking those spots, so those are the sites you want to beat.

Law firm SEO and organic Google ranking are all about relevance and authority, so we want to provide better and more relevant information than your competitors. Then, we want to increase your trust and authority numbers to surpass theirs.

So, let’s talk about authority.

Website trust and authority, which is website strength, really is about the numbers. It’s pretty simple. Let me explain:

There are tools that rate website trustworthiness and strength with a score from 1 to 100.

The strongest and most trusted websites climb to the top.

Website trust and strength come from backlinks.

A backlink is a little text link on another website that points to your website.

Good backlinks make you strong; bad backlinks make you weak. (Think of backlinks like your website’s nutrition.)

Websites with a good monthly link building campaign will eventually climb to the top of Google and compete with the strongest websites in the market.

Almost every law firm website I’ve analyzed can be outmuscled in about eight months. Most can be beaten in five months.

What is on-page law firm SEO?

Everything we do on your website makes you “relevant” for your best search terms in the eyes of Google.

In SEO, the term “relevance” describes the extent to which the content of your website’s page matches the search term used. That sounds simple, and it sort of is, but it requires a lot of planning and heavy lifting to show Google that your website is the most relevant for the search and therefore worthy of the top position.

Every page of your website has to be built in a very specific way. Click here to read about the eight most important on-page lawyer SEO elements Google uses to determine relevance: 8 on-page lawyer SEO elements

How much do law firm SEO services cost?

The monthly SEO budget needs to be right on the money—pun intended—because an underfunded campaign hurts results and an overfunded campaign hurts ROI.

Generally speaking, spend less than 8% of gross revenue on landing new clients and you’ll probably struggle to meet your new revenue goals. If you’re spending more than 14% and not getting a great ROI, you’re probably not marketing wisely.

Monthly law firm SEO fees are determined by the current strength and health of your website and the competitiveness of your market.

If you have tons of great content and decent on-page SEO, we can sharpen the entire site in thirty days and focus on building authority moving forward. Then, your fees will depend on how trusted and authoritative your site is compared to your top competitors.

If your website has good trust and authority metrics but lacks content and on-page SEO, we’ll need a budget that includes content marketing and link building.

Both situations require content and links (and social media and ad retargeting), but the degrees of each will vary, ultimately affecting the price.

How long will it take to rank my law firm website?

Because there are so many factors to consider, it’s case by case. We have pulled law firm websites out of penalties and brought them into the top three for ultra-competitive terms in eight months, so a law firm website in decent health in a fairly competitive market is very easy for us to rank.

I’m happy to do a deep analysis of your website versus your toughest competitors and provide you with a proposal to win in your market. Just ask. Call 212-960-8584.

How do you increase law firm website conversion rates?

Millions of dollars have been spent researching what makes website visitors take action, and we read every report and paper we can find on this topic. The following simplifies all of our research in a few bullet points:

Clean Law Firm Website Design – Have a great above the fold (ATF) header image, pleasing colors, and simple headline saying what you do, such as “Miami Car Accident Lawyer.”

We obsess about conversion. We never stop thinking about it and coming up with new ways to improve conversion rates for our clients. Top rankings that ultimately convert into cases allow a law firm to grow and thrive—that’s how you win online.

Should I ask to see law firm SEO ranking proof?

Absolutely. Thousands of SEO companies out there would gladly take your money. Before handing over a penny, make sure they can show you top three rankings from fifteen to twenty law firm clients in major cities for competitive keywords like car accident, DUI, and divorce. Just call me at 212-960-8584, and I’ll send over proof and references.

Have any of your clients’ sites been penalized?

No. We’ve pulled many law firm websites out of penalties, but we haven’t had one of our clients’ sites penalized. That’s because we stick to the two basic ingredients: relevance and authority.

It all boils down to great original content, clean on-page SEO, and relevant and authoritative backlinks.

Why is ‘organic’ law firm website ranking better than PPC?

You really don’t want to pay $200 for one click with Google AdWords. You’ll burn through $40,000 in a weekend. Plus, your conversion rate will be much higher with organic ranking, because it’s not an advertisement. Organic ranking actually builds credibility because Google is choosing you over the other firms in the market.

Our clients invest $5,000 to $8,000 per month in our organic campaigns and get $35,000 to $120,000+ of lead-generating traffic. This means they would have to spend ten to fifteen times more in AdWords to get the same traffic we’re providing organically.

How important is a law firm SEO keyword campaign for getting leads online?

Extremely important! A winning law firm SEO keyword campaign is built on the phrases your best prospects are searching in Google.

We’ve done the research and testing to compile lists of commonly searched keywords based on search volume, relevance, competition, click-through rate, and conversion, so you’ll get the keywords that have a history of success.

Our campaigns start with sixty proven keywords and increase over time. (As an example, “LOCATION car accident lawyer” is considered one keyword.) Some of our clients have over 500 keywords in their campaigns and over 95 percent of their search terms ranked in the top ten.

Note: Most phrases you want to rank for will require a dedicated landing page, but a properly built landing page will rank for many permutations of a given phrase and its synonyms. For example, a page optimized for “LOCATION car accident lawyer” should also rank for “auto accident attorney in LOCATION,” “car crash lawyer LOCATION,” “LOCATION attorney for car accident,” and so on.

What is a good law firm SEO backlink profile, and why do we need one?

Great link building profiles yield winning law firm websites. In any industry, whether you’re selling sneakers or washing machines online, the websites with the best link building profiles rank on top and get the most traffic.

The law firm websites with the best backlink profiles will win online, as long as the on-page elements are perfect, too. No exceptions.

Is page load time important? How fast are your landing pages?

Yes, pagespeed plays a small part in rankings. Google likes to promote pages that load quickly because doing so improves user experience, but a slowly loading page with great metrics (TF45+ / PA45+) will crush a fast page with weak metrics.

Because we code all of our websites by hand instead of using themes, our homepages load in 1.5 seconds and our internal pages load in 800 milliseconds. (That’s fast.)

What’s a good content marketing strategy?

We can speak on this subject for days! If you have a few minutes, click here to read about our approach: Law Firm Content Writing

How do you fix my website’s current law firm SEO issues?

Our law firm website SEO overhaul goes way deeper than simply changing meta tags and titles. Google has rules and coding it likes to see in websites that go beyond what users see on the page. With a checklist of over thirty items, Nick Kringas, our on-page lawyer SEO specialist, and our technical SEO go through your website to reoptimize pages to suit your keyword list.

Attention to detail is critical during the SEO overhaul—and so is one special ingredient we happen to have a lot of: the desire to win online.

Should I trust those spam SEO emails telling me my site is horrible?

Although they pop your domain name in the subject line, the truth is most of these emails are sent in bulk, and the “law firm SEO expert” never actually looked at your website. We suggest forwarding these emails to us so we can see whether there’s any validity to their claims. It can’t hurt to look.

Note: Having great communication with your SEO provider will curb the anxiety these spammy attempts can cause.

How is ApricotLaw different from other law firm SEO companies?

For ApricotLaw, law firm SEO is a full-contact, competitive sport. We’re aggressive, we play hard, and we take winning very seriously. Each team (design, ranking, and promotion) is ultra-present with every aspect of your campaign. That way, you get exactly what you need the moment you need it to show the web you are the authority in your market.

We only want one fantastic law firm per city per specialty. When we sign a contract with you, our goal is to keep you on board with us forever.

What are the main ingredients in Internet marketing for law firms?

I’d say law firm Internet marketing boils down to people, process, and performance. You need great people and smart processes, and everyone must perform.

Hard Work

It takes a perfectly tuned group of people to drive a winning campaign. Everyone on the team has an important role, and things have to get done right and on time. Internally, we have all kinds of words that mean “play hard.” One of them is “RAGE!!!!”

Resources

Who you know plays a part in online marketing, too. We build excellent business relationships with key players in the market and pass the benefits on to you.

Client Communication

You want to know what’s getting done, its effects, the strategy moving forward, and our expectations. Plus, the more we learn about you, the better we can understand and meet your goals. We learn something new on every client phone call, and these little nuggets of information go straight into your SEO campaign.

What’s the best law firm SEO process?

This is a pretty hard question to answer in a few paragraphs because everything we do is tailored to the law firm’s needs.

We have to take your online presence and monthly leads from where they are now to a place you never thought possible, and there’s a lot of moving parts involved in making that happen:

The first step of the process is getting to know you and your needs. (Call us.)

The second step is to do a deep analysis of your website versus the strength of your toughest competitors’ websites.

At that point, we’ll have a crystal clear idea of what we’ll need to get done each month. I can promise you’ll get a ton of special attention even before you choose to hire us. We want to make sure we’re a perfect fit for each other.

How do you handle legal directory listings?

We have a dedicated full-time employee to clean up all of your top-tier legal directory listings: Justia, FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, HG, Multi-Million Dollar Advocates, BBB, Super Lawyers, LexisNexis, National Trial Lawyers, and a few others.

On top of that, you get more than thirty-five additional legal directory profiles on properties that have fantastic metrics. Most of this work gets done in the first month of engagement.

What’s the best approach to law firm website design?

We are very proud of our designers and developers and feel they are the best in any industry.

Our law firm website designs are really the backbone of our clients’ high conversion rates. We’re always growing, getting faster, getting better, and having more fun!

Who will be my main contact for tracking and reporting?

Lack of transparency and poor communication have been problems in the law firm SEO industry since the beginning.

Some companies grab your money and run.

Some companies actually do some of the work but leave you in the dark.

Some companies have their sales reps try to sell you more services.

The obvious solution—and what’s best for you—is to have a high-level SEO stay in constant communication with you via strategy and feedback phone calls, video updates, and reports.

Kellen Bachman was a website analyst with us for a while, so when he expressed an interest in being in direct communication with our clients, we moved him into that position.

“Market/website analyst” to “client success manager” is the perfect evolution for Kellen. He knows law firm SEO and the legal market as well as anyone, and he has his finger on the pulse of every detail of your campaign.

Our communication strategy benefits you in three ways:

Kellen will be your sounding board. We want to get your feedback (and complaints) so we can make adjustments and exceed your expectations.

He’ll provide complete transparency by walking you through the details of the work of the month and the effects it had.

He’ll describe the strategy for the coming month and what improvements we expect to see.

This improvement does not close the door of communication with the owners of ApricotLaw or anyone else on the team. We’re all available for you, too!

Who will write my law firm website content?

We started our first year in business using swarms of independent contractors to write our content. It worked, but since we evolved into a company of all full-time employees, the quality and results have gone through the roof.

ApricotLaw law firm content writers have created thousands of pages on attorney websites that rank and convert visitors into leads. We’re very excited to have the best and most experienced writers in the industry—experts in writing for law firm websites who are trained in SEO and conversion strategies.